Recover SQL database data lost due to a DELETE operation

ApexSQL Recover is a recovery tool for SQL Server databases, which recovers deleted and truncated data. One of the featured recovery options is the Recover lost data due to a DELETE operation. It recovers data lost due to a malicious or accidental DELETE – such as data deleted due to an incorrect (or even worse – missing) WHERE clause

Recover lost data due to a DELETE operation

After providing the basic database connection parameters (the SQL instance name, authentication type and the name of the database the data was deleted from), ApexSQL Recover offers two choices:

  • Add transaction logs, and
  • No additional transaction logs are available

Select sources for recovery

Second option is simpler as it doesn’t allow choice of additional resources or the possibility to set up a time filter. It relies only on analyzing the online transaction log and therefore successful recovery utterly relies on the transaction log not being truncated, shrunk, or overwritten since the data was lost

The first option, if applicable, offers a better chance for recovery, as well as a faster recovery process. In this case, the user is prompted to provide, besides the database online transaction log offered by default, other additional resources ApexSQL Recover can scrape in order to restore the lost information. The additional data sources are transaction log backups and detached transactional logs

The next step is the time filter that can reduce the processing time significantly – ApexSQL Recover will focus only on those transactions committed in the specified time-range skipping all others

Time filter

After selecting appropriate time filter settings and tables which used to contain the lost data, the final step for this recovery option is to specify a recovery action: saving a recovery SQL script or directly recovering data to a SQL Server database different from the SQL Server from which the data is being recovered

As described, ApexSQL Recover is a step-by-step wizard tool which adapts to your recovery scenario and available resources in order to solve the problem. We‘ll be discussing some of its other recovery features in a number of upcoming articles of the ApexSQL Recover series. Stay tuned

June 29, 2018